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The early death of Silicon Valley veteran and former YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki this weekend has prompted an outpouring of condolences from Big Tech heavyweights for an advertising visionary who was also known for being a vocal champion of women in business.
硅谷资深人士、前YouTube首席执行官苏珊•沃西基(Susan Wojcicki)在上周末英年早逝,引发了大型科技公司(Big Tech)对这位广告界远见者的哀悼。她还因积极支持女性在商界的地位而闻名。
Wojcicki, who has died aged 56 after a two-year battle with lung cancer, was instrumental in growing Google’s mammoth advertising business. By the time she had moved from overseeing it in 2014 to running the video streaming platform YouTube it had ballooned to more than $50bn in revenues.
沃西基在与肺癌搏斗两年后去世,享年56岁。她在推动谷歌(Google)庞大的广告业务增长方面发挥了重要作用。到2014年她转而负责视频流媒体平台YouTube时,谷歌的广告业务收入已经激增至超过500亿美元。
Google’s 16th employee, Wojcicki was a pivotal figure at what has become one of the world’s most influential companies. She helped steer the evolution of how people — from individual creators to big advertisers — make and spend money online.
作为谷歌的第16位员工,沃西基在这家已成为全球最具影响力公司之一的企业中发挥了关键作用。她帮助引导了人们——从个人创作者到大型广告商——如何在网上赚钱和花钱的演变。
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent Alphabet, described Wojcicki as being “as core to the history of Google as anyone”.
谷歌母公司Alphabet的首席执行官桑达尔•皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)形容沃西基“与任何人一样,都是谷歌历史的核心人物”。
When announcing her resignation as CEO of Google-owned YouTube last year, Wojcicki said she had dreamt of working for a company “with a mission that could change the world for the better”, and thanked its co-founders for “the adventure of a lifetime” during her 25-year tenure.
去年在宣布辞去谷歌旗下YouTube的首席执行官职务时,沃西基表示她曾梦想着为一家“使世界变得更美好”的公司工作,并在她任职25年期间感谢其联合创始人带给她的“终身的冒险”。
Wojcicki studied history and literature at Harvard university, but displayed a prescient interest in the value of technology and coding. She later explained that she believed that “coding is like writing — and we live in a time of the new industrial revolution”.
沃西基在哈佛(Harvard)学习历史和文学,但展现出对技术和编码价值的先见之明。她后来解释说,她相信“编码就像写作一样——我们生活在新工业革命的时代”。
After a stint as a photojournalist in India, she undertook a masters degree in economics at the University of California before embarking on an MBA.
在印度担任摄影记者一段时间后,她在加利福尼亚大学(University of California)攻读经济学硕士学位,然后开始了MBA课程。
After university, Wojcicki took a job at chipmaker Intel. But Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were renting out her garage as they developed the eponymous search engine, and Wojcicki was intrigued.
大学毕业后,沃西基在芯片制造商英特尔找到了一份工作。但谷歌的联合创始人拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)和谢尔盖•布林(Sergey Brin)在开发同名搜索引擎时租用了她的车库,这让沃西基很感兴趣。
While pregnant with her first child in 1999, she gambled and took a job at the start-up. She later said that, although she had viewed the pair as “students who were doing their first company”, she had seen the “potential of what they were building”.
1999年怀第一个孩子时,她赌了一把,在这家初创公司找到了一份工作。她后来表示,尽管她认为这两人是“正在创办第一家公司的学生”,但她也看到了“他们正在打造的东西的潜力”。
The move marked an inflection point in Wojcicki’s career, and amounted to “one of the best decisions of my life”, she said last year.
这一举动标志着沃西基职业生涯的一个转折点,并且被她在去年称为“我一生中最好的决定之一”。
At Google, Wojcicki rose up the ranks to eventually lead its advertising business, and helped build a host of core products, including Google image search and the AdSense advertising network that later drew the ire of antitrust authorities in the EU and US.
在谷歌,沃西基一路晋升,最终领导了其广告业务,并帮助打造了一系列核心产品,包括谷歌图像搜索和后来引起欧盟和美国反垄断当局不满的AdSense广告网络。
In the early days, Wojcicki was “shepherding [the ads business] not just for Google but for the entire industry,” given that it was a “nascent” space, Keval Desai, a tech investor who worked alongside Wojcicki at Google for several years, told the FT.
曾与沃西基在谷歌共事多年的科技投资者凯瓦尔•德赛(Keval Desai)告诉英国《金融时报》,在早期,沃西基不仅为谷歌,也为整个行业“引领着(广告业务)”,因为这是一个“新兴”的领域。
A private person who did not court the limelight in the way of some Silicon Valley executives, Mercury News in 2011 crowned her “the most important Googler you’ve never heard of”. AdWeek mused in 2013 on whether Wojcicki was “the most important person in advertising”.
作为一个没有像某些硅谷高管那样追求曝光率的低调人物,2011年,《水星新闻》(Mercury News)将她誉为“你从未听说过的最重要的谷歌人”。2013年,《广告周刊》(AdWeek)曾探讨沃西基是否是“广告界最重要的人物”。
Her role in Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube, which she would go on to lead for almost a decade, was another defining moment. Alive to the company’s fast-growing video business and the potential for other companies to swoop in and buy it, Wojcicki sketched out a case for buying it in “probably . . . an hour”, she said later.
她在谷歌2006年收购YouTube的过程中扮演了关键角色,此后她又领导了YouTube近十年,这是她职业生涯中的另一个决定性时刻。沃西基敏锐地意识到公司快速增长的视频业务和其他公司可能抢先收购的风险,她后来表示,她在“大概一个小时内”就草拟了收购的方案。
Her vision for the platform was dynamic and evolved at pace with the fast-moving streaming and ad spaces. From when she took over in 2014, she oversaw the growth of the “creator economy”, and in 2020 launched YouTube Shorts in response to growing competition from video platform TikTok.
她对该平台的愿景与时俱进,随着流媒体和广告领域的快速变化不断发展。自2014年接任以来,她推动了“创作者经济”的增长,并于2020年推出了YouTube Shorts,以应对来自视频平台TikTok日益激烈的竞争。
“Creators are the beating heart of YouTube”, but Wojcicki was “the reason everyone at YouTube cared so deeply about those creators” whom she “went out of her way to meet,” said Priscilla Lau, who worked alongside her at YouTube for almost a decade.
在YouTube与沃西基共事近十年的普丽西拉•刘(Priscilla Lau)表示:“创作者是YouTube的跳动的心脏”,但沃西基是“让YouTube的每个人都如此关心这些创作者的原因”,她“特意去见这些创作者”。
Wojcicki also presided over the growth of YouTube’s advertising business which, like social network Facebook, increasingly stole advertising dollars from linear television. She launched its ad-free paid tier in 2015, and by the time she stepped down last year YouTube had more than 2.5bn monthly active users and nearly $30bn in annual ad revenues.
沃西基还主持了YouTube的广告业务增长,就像社交网络Facebook一样,越来越多地从线性电视中夺取广告收入。她在2015年推出了无广告付费会员服务,到去年离职时,YouTube拥有超过25亿月活跃用户和近300亿美元的年度广告收入。
YouTube cofounder Steve Chen told the FT the “success” that the platform had continued to see “has very directly tied to the incredible, inclusive method in which Susan ran the company”.
YouTube的联合创始人陈士骏(Steve Chen)告诉FT,平台持续取得的“成功”与苏珊经营公司的令人难以置信、包容的方式密切相关。
“She was incredibly patient and attentive to the opinions of everyone that worked at Google and YouTube,” he added.
他补充道:“她对在谷歌和YouTube工作的每个人的意见都非常耐心和关注。”
With the explosion of content on social media and streaming sites came controversy, however, and Wojcicki was among the tech chiefs forced to grapple with the challenge of how to police problematic content.
随着社交媒体和流媒体网站上内容的爆炸增长,争议也随之而来。然而,沃西基是被迫应对如何监管有问题的内容的技术主管之一。
YouTube was hit with an advertisers boycott in 2017 after ads began appearing alongside offensive and extreme content, prompting Wojcicki to hire more moderators and join other social media chiefs who were pledging to do better.
2017年,YouTube因广告出现在冒犯和极端内容旁边而遭到广告商的抵制,这促使沃西基雇佣更多的审核员,并加入其他社交媒体负责人的行列,承诺做得更好。
But Wojcicki was not subject to the same scrutiny as the Facebook and X founders Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the bigger public personalities who were hauled up in front of US lawmakers numerous times to be grilled. That led some to worry that the scale of the problem on YouTube itself was not being sufficiently scrutinised.
但沃西基并不像Facebook和X的创始人马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)和杰克•多尔西(Jack Dorsey)那样受到同样的严格审查,这两位更为公众熟知的人物多次被美国议员传唤接受质询。这导致一些人担心,YouTube本身的问题规模没有得到足够的审查。
The daughter of journalist Esther Wojcicki, who wrote a book about “how to raise successful people”, Wojcicki will also be remembered as an inspiration to women in tech, an advocate of the importance of workplace diversity and a pioneer of paid parental leave across the male-dominated tech industry.
作为记者埃丝特•沃西基(Esther Wojcicki)的女儿,她曾写过一本关于“如何培养成功人士”的书。沃西基还将被铭记为科技界女性的榜样,工作场所多样性的重要倡导者,以及在男性主导的科技行业中推动带薪育儿假的先驱。
The mother of five became Google’s first employee to go on maternity leave, and her advocacy around parental leave “set a new standard for businesses everywhere,” wrote Pichai this weekend.
这位五个孩子的母亲成为了谷歌的第一位休产假的员工,她对于父母假期的倡导“为全球企业树立了新的标准”,皮查伊在本周末写道。
In spite of her success, Wojcicki wrote in a 2017 Fortune column that she had “time and again” as a woman and mother faced questions about her ability and commitment to her work.
尽管取得了成功,沃西基在2017年的《财富》专栏中写道,作为一个女性和母亲,她一次又一次地面临关于她的能力和对工作的承诺的质疑。
That same year, public allegations of gender discrimination in the tech sector prompted Wojcicki to write in Vanity Fair that she was “frustrated that an industry so quick to embrace and change the future can’t break free of its regrettable past” and demand that tech CEOs “make gender diversity a personal priority”.
同年,科技行业中有关性别歧视的公开指控促使沃西基在《名利场》杂志上写道,她“对一个如此迅速拥抱和改变未来的行业无法摆脱令人遗憾的过去”感到沮丧,并要求科技公司的首席执行官“将性别多样性作为个人优先事项”。
Former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg described Wojcicki as “one of the most important women leaders in tech — the first to lead a major company”, adding: “I don’t believe my career would be what it is today without her unwavering support.”
Facebook前首席运营官雪莉•桑德伯格(Sheryl Sandberg)称沃西基是“科技界最重要的女性领导者之一,也是首位领导一家大型公司的女性”,并补充道:“如果没有她坚定的支持,我相信我的职业生涯不会有今天的成就。”
“She showed women that it was possible to excel in a thriving career and still be home by 6pm to have dinner with their families,” said Lau.
“她向女性们展示了,在事业蓬勃发展的同时,仍然有可能在晚上6点前回家与家人共进晚餐,”刘说。
Wojcicki’s battle with cancer was not widely known, though she said when stepping down from YouTube last year that she planned to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about”. A short time later her son Marco Troper died tragically from an overdose while a student at Berkeley.
沃西基与癌症的斗争并不广为人知,尽管她在去年辞去YouTube职务时表示计划“开始一个专注于家庭、健康和我热衷的个人项目的新篇章”。不久之后,她的儿子马尔科•特罗珀(Marco Troper)在伯克利读书期间不幸因过量服药而去世。
The outpouring of condolences and fond recollections of Wojcicki since her death was announced has been striking.
自沃西基去世的消息公布以来,对她的哀悼和深切回忆的涌现令人印象深刻。
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton highlighted Wojcicki’s ability to nurture an idea into “something that changes the world” and said she would “miss her brilliance, her kindness, and all she did to open opportunities in tech to people of all backgrounds”.
美国前国务卿希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)强调了沃西基将一个想法培育成“改变世界的东西”的能力,并表示她会“怀念她的才华、善良以及她为各个背景的人在科技领域开拓机会所做的一切”。
Desai said she had been “involved in every single important decision that Google ever made.” The company’s “belief that doing good is the primary north star is because of Susan,” he said.
德赛说,她“参与了谷歌做出的每一个重要决定”。他说,公司“相信行善是主要的北极星,这都是因为苏珊”。
Several people said Wojcicki had been an empathetic leader and a calm negotiator who spoke in plain terms and was able to win and retain the trust of the Google founders.
有几个人说沃西基是一位富有同情心的领导者和冷静的谈判者,她用通俗的语言表达,并能够赢得和保持谷歌创始人的信任。
Wojcicki is survived by her husband, Denis Troper, and her four remaining children, as well as her two sisters, Janet and Anne — the latter co-founded biotech company 23andMe and was married to google founder Brin until 2015.
沃西基的丈夫丹尼斯•特罗珀和她剩下的四个孩子,以及她的两个姐妹珍妮特和安妮仍然在世。安妮共同创办了生物技术公司23andMe,并曾与谷歌创始人布林结婚,直到2015年离婚。
“She was very down to earth,” Hadi Partovi, chief of educational non-profit Code.org on whose board Susan Wojcicki sat, told the FT.
“她是一个脚踏实地的人,”教育非营利组织Code.org的首席执行官哈迪•帕尔托维(Hadi Partovi)告诉英国《金融时报》。苏珊•沃西基是Code.org的董事会成员。
“It’s sad for the tech industry to have lost one of its greatest.”
“科技行业失去了一位最伟大的人,这令人难过。”